Until 1948, Bohemia was an administrative unit of Czechoslovakia as one of its "lands" ("země").[6] Since then, administrative reforms have replaced self-governing lands with a modified system of "regions" ("kraje") which do not follow the borders of the historical Czech lands (or the regions from the 1960 and 2000 reforms).[6] However, the three lands are mentioned in the preamble of the Constitution of the Czech Republic: "We, citizens of the Czech Republic in Bohemia, Moravia and Silesia…"[7]

History

Ancient Bohemia

Bohemia, like neighbouring Bavaria, is named after the Boii, a large Celtic nation known to the Romans for their migrations and settlement in northern Italy and other places. Another part of the nation moved west with the Helvetii into southern France, which was one of the events leading to the interventions of Julius Caesar's Gaulish campaign of 58 BC. The emigration of the Helvetii and Boii left southern Germany and Bohemia a lightly inhabited "desert" into which Suebic peoples arrived, speaking Germanic languages, and became dominant over remaining Celtic groups. To the south, over the Danube, the Romans extended their empire, and to the southeast, in present-day Hungary, were Dacian peoples.

In the area of modern Bohemia the Marcomanni and other Suebic groups were led by their king, Marobodus, after they had suffered defeat to Roman forces in Germany. He took advantage of the natural defenses provided by its mountains and forests. They were able to maintain a strong alliance with neighbouring tribes including (at different times) the Lugii, Quadi, Hermunduri, Semnones, and Buri, which was sometimes partly controlled by the Roman Empire and sometimes in conflict with it; for example, in the 2nd century, they fought Marcus Aurelius.

In late classical times and the early Middle Ages, two new Suebic groupings appeared to the west of Bohemia in southern Germany, the Alemanni (in the Helvetian desert), and the Bavarians (Baiuvarii). Many Suebic tribes from the Bohemian region took part in such movements westwards, even settling as far away as Spain and Portugal. With them were also tribes who had pushed from the east, such as the Vandals, and Alans.

Other groups pushed southwards towards Pannonia. The last known mention of the Kingdom of the Marcomanni, concerning a queen named Fritigil, is from the 4th century, and she was thought to have lived in or near Pannonia. The Suebian Langobardi, who moved over many generations from the Baltic Sea, via the Elbe and Pannonia to Italy, recorded in a tribal history a time spent in "Bainaib".

After the Migration Period, Bohemia was partially repopulated around the 6th century, and eventually Slavic tribes arrived from the east, and their language began to replace the older Germanic, Celtic and Sarmatian ones. These are precursors of today's Czechs, but the exact amount of Slavic immigration is a subject of debate. The Slavic influx was divided into two or three waves. The first wave came from the southeast and east, when the Germanic Lombards left Bohemia (c. 568 AD). Soon after, from the 630s to 660s, the territory was taken by Samo's tribal confederation. His death marked the end of the old "Slavonic" confederation, the second attempt to establish such a Slavonic union after Carantania in Carinthia.

Other sources (Descriptio civitatum et regionum ad septentrionalem plagam Danubii, Bavaria, 800–850) divide the population of Bohemia into the Merehani, Marharaii, Beheimare (Bohemani) and Fraganeo. (The suffix -ani or -ni means "people of-"). Christianity first appeared in the early 9th century but became dominant only much later, in the 10th or 11th century.

The 9th century was crucial for the future of Bohemia. The manorial system sharply declined, as it did in Bavaria. The influence of the central Fraganeo-Czechs grew, as a result of the important cultic centre in their territory. They were Slavic-speaking and thus contributed to the transformation of diverse neighbouring populations into a new nation named and led by them with a united slavic ethnic consciousness.[17]

Přemysl dynasty

Bohemia was made a part of the early Slavic state of Great Moravia, under the rule of Svatopluk I (r. 870–894). After Svatopluk's death Great Moravia was weakened by years of internal conflict and constant warfare, ultimately collapsing and fragmenting because of the continual incursions of the invading nomadic Magyars. Bohemia's initial incorporation into the Moravian Empire resulted in the extensive Christianization of the population. A native monarchy arose to the throne, and Bohemia came under the rule of the Přemyslid dynasty, which would rule the Czech lands for the next several hundred years.

The Přemyslids secured their frontiers from the remnant Asian interlocurs, after the collapse of the Moravian state, by entering into a state of semi-vassalage to the Frankish rulers. The alliance was facilitated by Bohemia's conversion to Christianity, in the 9th century. Continuing close relations were developed with the East Frankish Kingdom, which devolved from the Carolingian Empire, into East Francia, eventually becoming the Holy Roman Empire.

After a decisive victory of the Holy Roman Empire and Bohemia over invading Magyars in the 955 Battle of Lechfeld, Boleslaus I of Bohemia was granted the Moravia by German emperor Otto the Great. Bohemia would remain a largely autonomous state under the Holy Roman Empire for several decades. The jurisdiction of the Holy Roman Empire was definitively reasserted when Jaromír of Bohemia was granted fief of the Kingdom of Bohemia by Emperor King Henry II of the Holy Roman Empire, with the promise that he hold it as a vassal once he re-occupied Prague with a German army in 1004, ending the rule of Boleslaw I of Poland.

The first to use the title of "King of Bohemia" were the Přemyslid dukes Vratislav II (1085) and Vladislav II (1158), but their heirs would return to the title of duke. The title of king became hereditary under Ottokar I (1198). His grandson Ottokar II (king from 1253–1278) conquered a short-lived empire which contained modern Austria and Slovenia. The mid-13th century saw the beginning of substantial German immigration as the court sought to replace losses from the brief Mongol invasion of Europe in 1241. Germans settled primarily along the northern, western, and southern borders of Bohemia, although many lived in towns throughout the kingdom.

From the 13th century on, settlements of Germans developed throughout Bohemia, making Bohemia a bilingual country. The German settlers particularly brought mining technology to the mountainous regions of the Sudetes. In the mining town of Sankt Joachimsthal (now Jáchymov), famous coins called Joachimsthalers were coined, which gave their name to the Thaler and the dollar.

Meanwhile, Prague German intermediated between Upper German and East Central German, influencing the foundations of modern standard German. At the same time and place, the teachings of Jan Hus, the rector of Charles University and a prominent reformer and religious thinker, influenced the rise of modern Czech.

Hussite Bohemia

The more extreme Hussites became known as Taborites, after the city of Tábor that became their center.

During the ecumenical Council of Constance in 1415, Jan Hus was sentenced to be burnt at the stake as a heretic. The verdict was passed despite the fact that Hus was granted formal protection by Emperor Sigismund of Luxembourg prior to the journey. Hus was invited to attend the council to defend himself and the Czech positions in the religious court, but with the emperor's approval, he was executed on 6 July 1415. The execution of Hus, as well as five consecutive papal crusades against followers of Hus, forced the Bohemians to defend themselves in the Hussite Wars.

The uprising against imperial forces was led by a former mercenary, Jan Žižka of Trocnov. As the leader of the Hussite armies, he used innovative tactics and weapons, such as howitzers, pistols, and fortified wagons, which were revolutionary for the time, and established Žižka as a great general who never lost a battle.

After Žižka's death, Prokop the Great took over the command for the army, and under his lead the Hussites were victorious for another ten years, to the sheer terror of Europe. The Hussite cause gradually splintered into two main factions, the moderate Utraquists and the more fanatic Taborites. The Utraquists began to lay the groundwork for an agreement with the Catholic Church and found the more radical views of the Taborites distasteful. Additionally, with general war-weariness and yearning for order, the Utraquists were able to eventually defeat the Taborites in the Battle of Lipany in 1434. Sigismund said after the battle that "only the Bohemians could defeat the Bohemians."

Despite an apparent victory for the Catholics, the Bohemian Utraquists were still strong enough to negotiate freedom of religion in 1436. That happened in the so-called Compacts of Basel, declaring peace and freedom between Catholics and Utraquists. It lasted for only a short period of time, as Pope Pius II declared the compacts to be invalid in 1462.

In 1458, George of Podebrady was elected to ascend to the Bohemian throne. He is remembered for his attempt to set up a pan-European "Christian League", which would form all the states of Europe into a community based on religion. In the process of negotiating, he appointed Leo of Rozmital to tour the European courts and to conduct the talks. However, the negotiations were not completed because George's position was substantially damaged over time by his deteriorating relationship with the Pope.

Bohemia enjoyed religious freedom between 1436 and 1620, and became one of the most liberal countries of the Christian world during that period. In 1609, Holy Roman Emperor Rudolph II, who made Prague again the capital of the Empire at the time, himself a Roman Catholic, was moved by the Bohemian nobility to publish Maiestas Rudolphina, which confirmed the older Confessio Bohemica of 1575.

After Frederick's defeat in the Battle of White Mountain in 1620, 27 Bohemian estates leaders together with Jan Jesenius, rector of the Charles University of Prague were executed on the Prague's Old Town Square on 21 June 1621 and the rest were exiled from the country; their lands were then given to Catholic loyalists (mostly of Bavarian and Saxon origin). That ended the pro-reformation movement in Bohemia and also ended the role of Prague as ruling city of the Holy Roman Empire.

In the so-called "renewed constitution" of 1627, the German language was established as a second official language in the Czech lands. Czech formally remained the first language in the kingdom, but both German and Latin were widely spoken among the ruling classes although German became increasingly dominant, and Czech was spoken in much of the countryside.

The formal independence of Bohemia was further jeopardized when the Bohemian Diet approved administrative reform in 1749. It included the indivisibility of the Habsburg Empire and the centralization of rule, which essentially meant the merging of the Royal Bohemian Chancellery with the Austrian Chancellery.

At the end of the 18th century, the Czech National Revival movement, in cooperation with part of the Bohemian aristocracy, started a campaign for restoration of the kingdom's historic rights, whereby the Czech language was to regain its historical role and replace German as the language of administration. The enlightened absolutism of Joseph II and Leopold II, who introduced minor language concessions, showed promise for the Czech movement, but many of these reforms were later rescinded. During the Revolution of 1848, many Czech nationalists called for autonomy for Bohemia from Habsburg Austria, but the revolutionaries were defeated. The old Bohemian Diet, one of the last remnants of the independence, was dissolved, although the Czech language experienced a rebirth as romantic nationalism developed among the Czechs.

In 1861, a new elected Bohemian Diet was established. The renewal of the old Bohemian Crown (Kingdom of Bohemia, Margraviate of Moravia, and Duchy of Upper and Lower Silesia) became the official political program of both Czech liberal politicians and the majority of Bohemian aristocracy ("state rights program"), while parties representing the German minority and small part of the aristocracy proclaimed their loyalty to the centralistic Constitution (so-called "Verfassungstreue").

After the defeat of Austria in the Austro-Prussian War in 1866, Hungarian politicians achieved the Austro-Hungarian Compromise of 1867, ostensibly creating equality between the Austrian and Hungarian halves of the empire. An attempt by the Czechs to create a tripartite monarchy (Austria-Hungary-Bohemia) failed in 1871. The "state rights program" remained the official platform of all Czech political parties (except for social democrats) until 1918.

Under the "state rights program", appealing to the stability of Bohemia's borders over many centuries, the Czech emancipation movement claimed the right to the whole of the Bohemian lands over the Germans right to the lands, amounting to a third of Bohemia, where they formed the majority.[18]

Following the Munich Agreement in 1938, the border regions of Bohemia historically inhabited predominantly by ethnic Germans (the Sudetenland) were annexed to Nazi Germany. The remnants of Bohemia and Moravia were then annexed by Germany in 1939, while the Slovak lands became the separate Slovak Republic, a puppet state of Nazi Germany. From 1939 to 1945 Bohemia, (without the Sudetenland), together with Moravia formed the German Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia (Reichsprotektorat Böhmen und Mähren).

Any open opposition to German occupation was brutally suppressed by the Nazi authorities and many Czech patriots were executed as a result. In 1942, Nazi forces murdered the population of a whole village Lidice. After World War II ended in 1945, after initial plans to cede lands to Germany or to create German-speaking cantons had been abandoned,[18] the vast majority of the Bohemian Germans were expelled by force by the order of the re-established Czechoslovak central government, based on the Potsdam Agreement that acquiesced in large-scale ethnic cleansing. The Bohemian Germans' property was confiscated by the Czech authorities and amounted, according to contemporary estimates, to a third of the Czechoslovak national income. Germans who were valued for their skills were allowed to stay to pass on their knowledge to the Czech migrants.[18] The expulsion severely depopulated the area and from then on, locales were referred to in only their Czech equivalents regardless of their previous demographic makeup. The re-settlement of the formerly German-settled areas allowed many poorer people to acquire property, thus equalizing the Czechoslovak society.[18]

The Communist Party won the most votes in free elections but not a simple majority. Klement Gottwald, the communist leader, became Prime Minister of a coalition government.

In February 1948 the non-communist members of the government resigned in protest against arbitrary measures by the communists and their Soviet protectors in many of the state's institutions. Gottwald and the communists responded with a coup d'état and installed a pro-Soviet authoritarian state. In 1949, Bohemia ceased to be an administrative unit of Czechoslovakia, as the country was divided into administrative regions that did not follow the historical borders.

After the Velvet Divorce in 1993, the territory of Bohemia remained in the Czech Republic. The new Constitution of the Czech Republic provided for higher administrative units to be established, providing for the possibility of Bohemia as an administrative unit, but did not specify the form they would take. A constitutional act in 1997 rejected the restoration of self-governing historical Czech lands and decided for the regional system that has been in use since 2000.[20]Petr Pithart, former Czech prime minister and president of the Senate at the time, remained one of the main advocates of the land system,[21] claiming that the primary reason for its refusal was the fear of possible Moravian separatism.[21]

Capitalizing on interest regarding the Kladsko area in the Czech national psyche, a special tourist area in the Náchod District has been designated as the Kladsko Borderland Tourist Area[24] (tourism district; Czech: turistická oblast Kladské pomezí). The area, entirely within the Czech Republic, was formerly known as the Jirásek's Region (Czech: Jiráskův kraj), Adršpach rocks (Czech: Adršpašské skály).

A panorama of Kłodzko, the capital city of Kłodzko Land which is referred to as "Little Prague".

Related Research Articles

The Hussites were a Czech pre-Protestant Christian movement that followed the teachings of reformer Jan Hus, who became the best known representative of the Bohemian Reformation.

Moravia is a historical region in the east of the Czech Republic and one of three historical Czech lands, with Bohemia and Czech Silesia.

The Sudetenland is the historical German name for the northern, southern, and western areas of former Czechoslovakia which were inhabited primarily by Sudeten Germans. These German speakers had predominated in the border districts of Bohemia, Moravia, and Czech Silesia from the time of the Austrian Empire.

The history of what are now known as the Czech lands is very diverse. These lands have changed hands many times, and have been known by a variety of different names. Up until the fall of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy after the First World War, the lands were known as the lands of the Bohemian Crown and formed a constituent state of that empire: the Kingdom of Bohemia.

The Czech lands or the Bohemian lands are the three historical regions of Bohemia, Moravia, and Czech Silesia. Together the three have formed the Czech part of Czechoslovakia since 1918 and the Czech Republic since 1 January 1969, which became independent on 1 January 1993.

The Duchy of Bohemia, also later referred to in English as the Czech Duchy, was a monarchy and a principality of the Holy Roman Empire in Central Europe during the Early and High Middle Ages. It was formed around 870 by Czechs as part of the Great Moravian realm. Bohemia separated from disintegrating Moravia after Duke Spytihněv swore fidelity to the East Frankish king Arnulf in 895.

The Lands of the Bohemian Crown, sometimes called Czech lands in modern times, were a number of incorporated states in Central Europe during the medieval and early modern periods connected by feudal relations under the Bohemian kings. The crown lands primarily consisted of the Kingdom of Bohemia, an electorate of the Holy Roman Empire according to the Golden Bull of 1356, the Margraviate of Moravia, the Duchies of Silesia, and the two Lusatias, known as the Margraviate of Upper Lusatia and the Margraviate of Lower Lusatia, as well as other territories throughout its history.

The Kingdom of Bohemia, sometimes later in English literature referred to as the Czech Kingdom, was a medieval and early modern monarchy in Central Europe, the predecessor of the modern Czech Republic. It was an Imperial State in the Holy Roman Empire, and the Bohemian king was a prince-elector of the empire. The kings of Bohemia, besides Bohemia itself, also ruled other lands belonging to the Bohemian Crown, which at various times included Moravia, Silesia, Lusatia, and parts of Saxony, Brandenburg, and Bavaria.

Czech Silesia is the name given to the part of the historical region of Silesia located in the present-day Czech Republic. While not today an administrative entity in itself, Czech Silesia is, together with Bohemia and Moravia, one of the three historical Czech lands. In this context, it is often mentioned simply as "Silesia", even though it is only around one tenth of the area of the historic land of Silesia.

German Bohemians, later known as Sudeten Germans, were ethnic Germans living in the Czech lands of the Bohemian Crown, which later became an integral part of Czechoslovakia in which before 1945 over three million German Bohemians inhabited, about 23 percent of the population of the whole country and about 29.5 percent of the population of Bohemia and Moravia. Ethnic Germans migrated into the Kingdom of Bohemia, an electoral territory of the Holy Roman Empire, from the 11th century, mostly in the border regions of what was later called the "Sudetenland", which was named after the Sudeten Mountains. The process of German expansion was known as Ostsiedlung. The name "Sudeten Germans" was adopted during rising nationalism after the fall of Austria-Hungary after the First World War. Ater the Munich Agreement, the so-called Sudetenland became part of Germany.

This article deals with historic administrative divisions of Czechoslovakia up to 1992, when the country was split into the Czech Republic and Slovakia and the divisions were changed.

The history of Prague covers more than a thousand years, during which time the city grew from the Vyšehrad Castle to the capital of a modern European state, the Czech Republic.

The Republic of German-Austria was a country created following World War I as the initial rump state for areas with a predominantly German-speaking or ethnic German population within what had been the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The territories covered an area of 118,311 km2 (45,680 sq mi), with 10.4 million inhabitants.

The Province of German Bohemia was a province in Bohemia, now the Czech Republic, established for a short period of time after the First World War, as part of the Republic of German-Austria.

The history of Moravia, one of the Czech lands, is diverse and characterized by many periods of foreign governance.

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Kłodzko Land is a historical region in southwestern Poland.

The Bohemian Reformation, preceding the Protestant Reformation of the 16th century, was a Christian movement in the late medieval and early modern Kingdom and Crown of Bohemia striving for a reform of the Roman Catholic Church. Lasting for more than 200 years, it had a significant impact on the historical development of Central Europe and is considered one of the most important religious, social, intellectual and political movements of the early modern period. The Bohemian Reformation produced the first national church separate from Roman authority in the history of Western Christianity, the first apocalyptic religious movement of the early modern period, and the first pacifist Protestant church.

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↑ Mykhailo Hrushevsky (1997) [1898]. Andrzej Poppe; Frank E. Sysyn; Uliana M. Pasiczny (eds.). History of Ukraine-Rus'. Volume 1: From Prehistory to the Eleventh Century. Translated by Marta Skorupsky. Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies Press. pp.161–162. ISBN978-1-895571-19-6. The second detail in Constantine's account, which supposedly points to the eastern Carpathians, is his reference to a 'place called Boiki (Boiki)' on the border with the White Serbs; for a long time this was considered — and some consider it still – to be a reference to the Ukrainian Boikos. That is very unlikely, however, because the location is too far east for the Serbs, nor is there any indication that the name of the Boikos was ever in such wide usage. So all we are left with to suggest the existence of a Rus' Croatia in the Carpathians is the Primary Chronicle ... Published by H. Jireiek, the Karten zur Geschichte (1897) also show the 'Boiki' on the Dnister (map 4). It is more likely that Boiki is a distorted variant of the name Boiohem, or Bohemia, as most scholars now believe...

↑ Gyula Moravcsik, ed. (1949). De administrando imperio. Pázmány Péter Tudományegyetemi Görög Filoĺ́ogiai Intézet. pp.130–131. ...should be modern Saxony, where remnants of Serbs (Sorbs) are still living. The name 'Boiki' has been much disputed over by specialists ... has proved that the 'place called Boiki' can only be Bohemia. Grégoire (L'Origine, 98) rejects Skok's proposal to read 'Boioi', and suggests 'Boimi'. C.'s account contains one serious inexactitude: namely, the statement that the Serbs lived 'in a place called by them Boiki'. Although we have documentary proof of the existence of Croats in Bohemia, we have none to suggest that Serbs lived there. Bohemia was in fact another neighbour of White Serbia